Sam Mellinger | Ex-GM Peterson ‘saddened’ by Chiefs’ situation
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
Carl Peterson knows exactly why I called. He knows why some Chiefs fans want to hear from him. In some real ways, this conversation is a beach ball of schadenfreude placed on a tee for the man who effectively ran all things Chiefs for nearly 20 years, then was fired four years ago with his reputation in Kansas City at least frayed.

Peterson knows all of this. He won’t take his biggest swing.

But he will make solid contact.

“I guess like every Chiefs fan, I’m disappointed and I’m saddened by what’s transpired there,” he says. “I think I know and made a real point to learn who the Chiefs fans were and what they wanted. I feel for them, because I’ve always felt the Kansas City Chiefs were, should be, and could be a great franchise.”

There’s more.

“I was very, very fortunate to work for Lamar Hunt for 18 of my 20 years there. He’s the guy who made the difference for me. They’ve fallen on hard times. That’s for sure.”

The point here is not just for Peterson to dance on the Chiefs’ rubble. There is some perspective in remembering what he and Lamar Hunt made together. They built the Chiefs’ brand in the 1990s. Through much of the 1980s, the team was a local afterthought. If they won, cool. If they lost, whatever. Nobody much noticed.

That began to change when Hunt hired Peterson, and Peterson hired coach Marty Schottenheimer and the whole thing just took off, with seven playoff appearances in the first eight years of the 1990s.

The Chiefs’ parking lot became the biggest party in Kansas City. Arrowhead Stadium became one of the toughest places to play in the NFL. Peterson, who lives in New York now, is one of the strongest connections we have to that time.

“We had fun at it,” he says. “We made it a fun thing. We made it a family thing. Lamar believed very much in that, and I did, too. He was a wonderful owner. He’d say, ‘How can I help?’ I’d say, ‘Lamar, I need you to do a contest in the parking lot to judge buses and vans that fans have painted,’ and he loved that.”

Now, of course, that is all different. Lamar’s son Clark fired Peterson two years after taking over, and Peterson says the two never communicate.

The Chiefs made massive personnel changes after Peterson was fired, often dropping thinly veiled shots along the way. Peterson hasn’t been back to Arrowhead since, and remains touchy about not being invited to Schottenheimer’s induction to the team’s Ring of Honor.

It is a vastly different franchise now, and when Scott Pioli took over for Peterson after a 2-14 disaster in 2008, that was part of the point. The Chiefs were broken and needed fixing. A youth movement that started under Peterson — Brandon Flowers, Tamba Hali, Jamaal Charles, Derrick Johnson and other key players who predate Pioli — needed structure, and until this season, there was reason for optimism.

Now, the big story out of the parking lot before Sunday’s loss to the Bengals was the team stopping the mass distribution of flyers listing some unflattering facts about the Chiefs on one side and “FIRE PIOLI” on the other.

The Chiefs have never had a disconnect with their fans like this. That was always a priority with Peterson, sometimes to the point of being criticism. The common knock on the Chiefs was that they cared more about filling the stadium than advancing in the playoffs.

Now, team and town would settle for a fun atmosphere and competitive team. The last man to oversee a run like that watches from a distance.

“I do come back to Kansas City,” he says. “I still have a home there. People on the street, they’re very disappointed. Some of them are angry at what’s transpired. I’m sorry to see that. It’s no longer my watch, so I can have my personal feelings about it, but it’s not my responsibility anymore.”

"He had no teeth, and he was slobbering all over himself. I'm thinking, 'You can have your money back, just get me out of here. Let me go be an accountant." I can't tell you how badly I wanted out of there."Denver rookie QB John Elway, on Jack Lambert, after Lambert and the Steelers knocked Elway out of his first game as a pro (1983).

making the fans hate the franchise is actually really hard to do...and he has done it...Clark seems not to realize this yet, imo, which is strange

Remarkable isn't it?

At one time, it would've been very difficult for management to create mere fan apathy given the enduring loyalty Chiefs fans have shown for years.

Unbelievably...in less than four years Hunt and Pioli have cultivated more than apathy but widespread fan hostility. They have done so by all available means: horrid drafts and FA decisions, garbage coaching staffs, callous alienation of former Chiefs players...and of course, Pioli's well-documented culture of arrogance, fear and mistrust enforced by his Secret Service wannabe goons.

__________________My name is Clay. I am a clueless moron when it comes to evaluating football talent. I thought that Pat Mahomes was unworthy of being drafted in the first round, also, I wanted Geno Smith first overall. I also claimed that tyreek hill was undeserving of even being in the CFL. I am wrong 20x more than I'm right and I will troll this site with my uneducated football takes.

Yeah. The only way I start ripping Clark at this time is if he decides to retain Pioli. He swung for the homerun and missed. Hopefully this doesn't make him timid on the next hire. It's like drafting a first round QB: if you draft a bust, don't wait 30 years before trying again...

I'd guess there is no way CBS would have been allowed to talk about the blackout on Sunday without permission from the Chiefs.

We know it didn't come from Pioli.

__________________My name is Clay. I am a clueless moron when it comes to evaluating football talent. I thought that Pat Mahomes was unworthy of being drafted in the first round, also, I wanted Geno Smith first overall. I also claimed that tyreek hill was undeserving of even being in the CFL. I am wrong 20x more than I'm right and I will troll this site with my uneducated football takes.

Well we'll see. Time will tell if that is the case. Remember, what we are seeing today was in a sense what Lamar had in place throughout the 70's and 80's.

Clark has had one hire, it looked good on paper but ended up failing miserably. All of these problems can go away if he gets the second hire right. If the second hire ends up failing as well, then all of a sudden we have a pattern developing and at that point I will be worried about Clark.

But if he does get rid of Pioli at the end of the year and does hire what looks like a smart football man and leader who can move this franchise forward, I think at that point credit needs to be given to Clark that he actually cares about wins and losses, which Lamar did not necessarily seem to care about as much as being loyal to his employees...

Spending under the cap, regarless of your hire being a dipshit dumbass, says a lot in and of itself. I get your point, but he's a daddy's boy, and never had to think, just put daddy's credit card on the counter to get what he wanted. Let's hope he finally remembers that he got what he wanted when he spent the money he had made available to him for no effort spent getting said money.

I still think he's too stupid to know that money invested int he team and the players (not luxury suites) will make more money down the road..

__________________My name is Clay. I am a clueless moron when it comes to evaluating football talent. I thought that Pat Mahomes was unworthy of being drafted in the first round, also, I wanted Geno Smith first overall. I also claimed that tyreek hill was undeserving of even being in the CFL. I am wrong 20x more than I'm right and I will troll this site with my uneducated football takes.

Pioli said he didnt want to pay Carr more than Flowers because he was afraid it would hurt Flowers feelings...so he went out and signed a corner for nearly as much money that was cut before the midway point of his first year here because he was so incredibly terrible.

On top of that, the Chiefs are one of the top teams in cash spending...and are 1-9 and are probably the worst team in the NFL.

How does any of that fall on the shoulders of Clark Hunt and NOT Scott Pioli?

Clark is writing the checks and Pioli is giving them to the wrong people.

Pioli said he didnt want to pay Carr more than Flowers because he was afraid it would hurt Flowers feelings...so he went out and signed a corner for nearly as much money that was cut before the midway point of his first year here because he was so incredibly terrible.

On top of that, the Chiefs are one of the top teams in cash spending...and are 1-9 and are probably the worst team in the NFL.

How does any of that fall on the shoulders of Clark Hunt and NOT Scott Pioli?

Clark is writing the checks and Pioli is giving them to the wrong people.

Peterson built Arrowhead, drafted a few HOFers, and turned the Chiefs into one of the best franchises of the 90s; he was really ****ing good at his job, but he needed to leave after '98.

I didn't have a problem with him until he picked Grbac over Gannon and started churning out the Rufus columns. He was great until the NFL came up with newfangled rules like free agency and salary cap.

__________________
"I like Chiefs president Carl Peterson. I respect his business savvy. I envy his management skills and his penchant never to be driven by the whims of popularity. I admire his willingness to take responsibility for decisions that don’t work out the way he would have wanted."

Rufus Dawes is a Pen Name. It's taken from the name of a Union Officer from the Civil War, the first guy in command of Union Troops at Gettysburg. Both Carl and the Chiefs main PR guy at the time Bob Moore were both big civil war buffs. So they picked that name for their "pen name."